August 27, 2004

"The notion that a bad guy is going to get it is very important to humans"

"The notion that a bad guy is going to get it is really important to humans," says John Hibbing, a professor of political science at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, re the neurological basis of revenge, reports Health News. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth know that, but now scientists are revealing the evolutionary advantage of the vengeance response:

The findings, which appear in the Aug. 27 issue of Science, may partly explain the phenomenon of "altruistic punishment," which is exacting revenge on behalf of a stranger.

"A lot of theoretical work in evolutionary biology and our previous experimental work suggest that altruistic punishment has been crucial for the evolution of cooperation in human societies," said Ernst Fehr, the senior author of the study . . . "Our previous experiments show that if altruistic punishment is possible, cooperation flourishes. If we rule out altruistic punishment, cooperation breaks down."

The study is one of the first to use brain imaging to investigate the phenomenon . . . Using Positron Emission Tomography (PET), the researchers scanned the brain activity of the volunteers while they were making the decision to punish or not.

As it turned out, the decision to punish activated the caudate nucleus, a region of the brain involved in experiencing pleasure or satisfaction, Fehr said. Although the study volunteers were engaging in "regular" revenge, the authors think the findings could be extrapolated to altruistic punishment.

-- Shylock's defense from The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare from Act III, Scene 1

Do these findings explain why the irresolution of Vietnam's aftermath left us a nation divided? Kerry may be the catalyst -- or perhaps the self-sacrificial lamb -- but this exactment of revenge by a generation of wronged Vietnam veterans now playing out on the national stage may be a necessary catharsis long overdue, an "altruistic punishment" to restore national cooperation.

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I recently had the same basic thought. Even if it happens that Kerry should win, a generation of men who felt their honor was besmirched by the anti-war movement will have had their day in the sun, gotten their word out. That may just be a healthy thing.

From one point of view, most of the Justice System is directly involved in altruistic punishment. So if altruistic punishment generates pleasure in similar ways to cocaine, then is it psychologically addictive like cocaine?

Surely sadism arises when an individual figures out how to stimulate the sensation of pleasure through punishment even when the victim does not deserve the punishment. Stalin and Saddam did this by insisting that those they killed were evil "enemies of the people" even when such a charge was, by any rational standard, absurd. Such murderers could not ever admit that their punishments were actually crimes. If they did, their mindset would then demand that they be punished. Perhaps that's the origin of masochism. They also could not tolerate anyone pointing out their irrationality or their entire framework of justification would collapse. This explains why they were so darn touchy!

"...but this exactment of revenge by a generation of wronged Vietnam veterans now playing out on the national stage may be a necessary catharsis long overdue, an "altruistic punishment" to restore national cooperation."

There's one thing wrong with this argument, the wronged vets have been part of national cooperation. The wacko lefties have been sabotaging this country steadily for 35 years.

How does this revenge get the lefties to cooperate for the national good?